Tennessee’s 2011 law requiring voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot had little apparent statistical effect on citizen access to the polls in the general election, records from the Secretary of State’s Office show.

Of the 2.45 million votes cast during the election, 674 provisional ballots related to the new photo ID law were filled out. Of that total, 178 voters returned with proper photo identification and had their ballots counted, according to records.

The new law states that voters who come to the polls without a photo ID may still vote using a provisional ballot. Voters can then return to the polls within two days with a valid ID, such as a driver’s license, and their vote will be counted.

“It’s not even 1 percent of the vote,”Secretary of State spokesman Blake Fontenay said.

The share of voters who did not have their provisional ballot counted because they lacked photo ID comes to roughly .02 percent of all votes cast.

The Nov. 6 election was the broadest test to date of the voter ID law, and lawmakers who supported it say it is proving a success.

“From the moment this law was introduced opponents have been screaming that the sky was falling in ways that would shame Chicken Little,” Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said in a statement. “The numbers have shown otherwise. Photo ID provides voter protection, and now we have proof.”

Shelby County had the most voters casting provisional ballots due to the voter ID law, with 134 cast. Records show 15 of those voters returned with the required identification. Davidson County came in second with 41 voters casting provisional ballots.

“When I see these numbers and then open the paper and see obvious examples of voter fraud in Philadelphia and Cleveland, I rest comfortably knowing that Tennessee has done the right thing in protecting the franchise,” Ramsey said. “What these numbers reveal is that the only thing Tennessee’s voter ID law suppresses is voter fraud.”

When the Republican-controlled Tennessee Legislature passed the photo ID bill, opponents argued the measure was not designed to protect voter integrity, but rather was a deliberate move to discourage groups that tend to vote Democratic, such as the elderly and minority voters.

They say the real takeaway from the recent election is not that the vast majority appear unaffected by the voter ID law, but that potentially hundreds of otherwise eligible voters may have been turned away.

“Those numbers, they may seem low to you, but they’re not,” said Mary Mancini, executive director of Tennessee Citizen Action, a voter advocacy group.“That’s a good chunk of people who don’t have a voter ID.”

“If one voter is kept from casting their vote because of this law then it’s one vote too many,” she said. “The other thing is that we’ll never really know many people showed up at their polling place, saw the sign about having a photo ID and just left.”

The Secretary of State’s Office maintains there were few problems at the polls, and that there’s another side to those arguments.

According to Fontenay, “Even one person impersonating a voter is one too many in our eyes. Their argument is that they have no way of knowing how many people might not have had an ID and might have stayed home. Our argument is that we have no way of knowing how many people might have, in the past, cast fraudulent ballots.”

While those are open questions, what seems clear is that public opinion is on the side of photo ID.

And that number could rise, according to the NCSL, because a total of 33 states have passed voter ID laws.

Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are among them, but those measures are tied up in court battles or, in the case of Mississippi, require both legislative approval and federal sign-off via the Voting Rights Act.

The mentality offered here, that it is better to disenfranchise 500 people than to allow one person to vote fraudulently is quite troubling. At the end of the day, the Republican supporters of the Photo ID have offered scant evidence to show that Voter ID law solves any existing problem, when we can clearly see that many Tennesseans have had their right to vote infringed upon by this unnecessary and unwarranted poll tax.

Conservative4Ever

You mean 500 were caught trying to vote fraudualantly

http://www.facebook.com/sean.braisted Sean Braisted

That makes perfect sense.

So, 500 or so individuals, skilled in the art of voter fraud (but not skilled enough to know about the recently passed photo ID law) go to the polling place to cast a ballot under the wrong name.

Unable to produce a photo ID, instead of walking away (you know, because they were attempting to commit a felony), they then proceed to go through the trouble of filling out a provisional ballot, knowing full well they would be unable to return with the photo ID required to have the provisional ballot count.

I suppose you could argue that case. Or, you could perhaps argue that 500 or so folks either lost their ID before Election Day or forgot it. Busy with work, family, and other things, they didn’t have the time to come back to the Election Commission to ensure their vote was cast and counted.

sylamore

Millions spent to deprive 500 people of their vote, and you’re bragging about it?

cful

To quote, “if one vote is missed because……… blah blah”…… and my reply, if one fraudulent vote is cast, it’s one too many.

Anyone who opposes voter ID means to cheat the system… It is mandatory that those who vote are legally able to do so. If that means a state system for identification then so be it. Really, it is the same as people from other countries being identified as “legal”.

Democrat party is a corrupt institution that supports illegal activity to further their Secular Progressive cause. Every American should look to their own state and work for voter ID. Nothing else will resolve this corruption

Tom Paine

So, the basic premise of Trent’s piece is that the GOP-passed Photo ID law (which was passed to correct a problem that didn’t exist in the first place) is a great idea because it didn’t create a problem where none existed? That’s some twisted logic. Now, we see why Trent returned from Texas in the first place: to provide Twitter material for the Republican super-majority. Just the type of hard hitting journalism we’ve come to expect.